Word: tracer
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...spectacular of the smashing, thundering, rumbling, banging, whizzing, screeching demonstrations was the night sniping by a battery of automatically-aimed 3-inch "archies" at 27-foot sock-shaped targets towed 1,200 yards behind bombing planes more than two miles aloft. Giant searchlights picked out the "socks". Machine gun tracer bullets streaked aloft. White flowers with angry red centres blossomed abruptly and faded where shrapnel burst in the sky. A direct hit of the last target's towline ended the show. Experts pronounced the anti-aircraft marksmanship the best yet achieved...
...aircraft machine gun. Instead of aiming and firing at the target by the aid of sights, a gunner firing the new weapon simply turns it like a garden hose upon aircraft overhead and sprays them with a stream of 450 bullets per minute, every fifth bullet being a flaming "tracer bullet" which indicates...
path of the others. The new gun has a vertical range of 15,000 feet, and a horizontal range of 27,000 ft. Its flaming "tracer shots" will serve the added purpose of setting fire to enemy aircraft. Its projectiles will pierce armor plate one inch thick at 12,000 feet. Each weighs about a quarter of a pound...
Gardeners who have attempted to down elusive butterflies with a hose opined that even with the new gun anti-aircraft marksmen will scarcely have it all their own way; shook their heads doubtfully even when informed that the tracer bullets will be visible to a height of 7,500 ft. at night...